6872. 'You shall worship God beside this mountain' means perception and acknowledgement of the Divine springing from love. This is clear from the meaning of 'worshipping God' as adoration of the Divine, but when the expression is used in reference to the Lord the perception and acknowledgement of the Divine in the Human is meant; and from the meaning of 'mountain' as the good of God's love, dealt with in 795, 796, 2722, 4210, 6435, 6829. From these meanings it is evident that the words 'you shall worship God beside this mountain', when used in reference to the Lord, mean a perception and acknowledgement of the Divine springing from love.

[2] What is meant by a perception and acknowledgement of the Divine springing from love must be stated. Everyone's character is recognized from his love. For the inner being (esse) of anyone's life is love; his very life emanates from it. Therefore the kind of love that reigns with a person determines the person's character. If self-love and a love of the world reign, and as a consequence the love of vengeance, hatred, cruelty, adultery, and the like, then that person is a devil so far as his spirit or interior man which lives after death is concerned, no matter what he may seem to be to outward appearance. But if a love of God and a love of the neighbour are what reign with a person, and consequently a love of what is good and true, and also of what is just and honourable, then he is an angel so far as his spirit which lives after death is concerned, no matter what he may seem to be to outward appearance. But when God's love reigns with someone - as it has done only in the Lord - that one is God. Thus the Lord's Human was made Divine when He received in His Human His Father's love, which was the inner Being (Esse) of His life. From all this one may see what is meant by a perception and acknowledgement of the Divine that springs from love.

[3] It is an unalterable truth that a person is entirely the same in character as his love. This is evident from angels in the next life who, when they are seen, look like forms of love. Love itself not only shines but also breathes out of them, so that you may say that they are in every respect embodiments of love. The reason for this is that all the interiors of an angel, like those of a person in this world, are nothing other than forms that receive life. And being forms that receive life they are forms that receive different kinds of love; for these constitute a person's life. Since therefore the love that flows in and the form that receives it are compatible with each other it follows that the character of an angel or a person in this world is determined by his love. This applies not only to the primary organic substances in the brain but also to the whole body, since the body is nothing other than an organism formed from its primary substances.

[4] From all this it becomes clear that a person is made completely new when he is being regenerated; for at that time every single part of him is being made fit to receive heavenly kinds of love. With man however the earlier forms are not destroyed but removed, whereas with the Lord the earlier forms which came from His mother were completely destroyed and rooted out, and Divine forms were received and replaced them. For God's love is incompatible with any form other than a Divine one; it casts all the rest totally aside. As a consequence of this the Lord was no longer Mary's son once He was glorified.

71. To show that the merely natural person thinks about spiritual and Divine matters in terms of space, and the spiritual person independently of space, let the following illustration suffice.

The merely natural person thinks in terms of ideas that he has acquired from objects visible to his sight, all of which exhibit in them a configuration possessing length, breadth and height and having a shape delimited by these, whether angular or curvilinear. These dimensions are clearly present in his mental conceptions of visible objects in the world, and they are also present in his mental conceptions of things not visible, as in his conceptions of civil and moral matters. He does not, indeed, see them, but still they are present as extended concepts.

[2] It is otherwise in the case of a spiritual person, especially in the case of an angel in heaven. His thinking is unrelated to configuration and form having anything do to with spatial length, breadth or height, but having to do with the state of a thing arising from the state of a person's life. Consequently, instead of spatial length he pictures the goodness of a thing arising from the goodness of a person's life, instead of spatial breadth the truth of a thing arising from the truth of a person's life, and instead of height degrees of these. Thus he thinks in terms of correspondence, which is the relation of spiritual and natural things to each other. And it is because of this correspondence that length in the Word symbolizes the goodness of a thing, breadth the truth of a thing, and height degrees of these.

It is apparent from this that when an angel in heaven reflects on the Divine omnipresence, it is utterly impossible for him to think otherwise than that the Divine fills all things independently of space. What an angel thinks is true, because the light that enlightens his intellect is Divine wisdom.